Laparoscopic surgery has been widely applied to cure malignant disease as well as benign disease. Laparoscopic surgery is considered to be the basis of surgical operations as robot operations using laparoscopic surgery has been introduced.
The advantages of laparoscopic surgery compared to abdominal section are pain reduction, early recovery of patients, and reduction of hospitalization period. And the problem of laparoscopic surgery compared to abdominal section that has been pointed out so far is that it is impossible to check tumor sites and organs by directly sensing them with hands.
Particularly, in case of early gastric cancer or colon cancer, it is important to mark the location of tumor before the surgery since it is difficult to directly observe lesions at laparoscopic surgery. Further, in case of early colon cancer, although the methods for locating lesion including barium enema, tattoo method under colonoscopy, clip installation around lesion, and observation of colonoscopy during operation are currently used, the problem of usefulness and side effects has been raised as these methods are not suitable for laparoscopic surgery.
Accordingly, there has been a demand for a new non-invasive method of locating lesion that allows real-time visual identification of a state of installation at marked lesion before or during operation and a site that needs to be removed during operation.